Best Books For An August Holiday

You've made it: the beach. A couple of weeks of lolling about in a vague state of inebriation while you hope the family manages to entertain itself. But there are problems. Once upon a time you would have settled down with a novel for an entire afternoon, but now you do not quite feel yourself if you're not tapping away on your Blackberry or iPhone. Yet, by being so connected you undercut the very point of a holiday. Hmmmm. What you need are pageturners, books, dammit, that you can't put down. Don't worry about the classic novels you think you should be reading, or the memoirs of Peter Mandelson. That way pain lies. Just take along the GWG's Shortlist of the Best Books To See You Through An August Holiday, we guarantee they will help you make that difficult break from Twitter.

1. Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)

Think you're over this sort of thing? Nonsense. Light, delightful and quietly profound, Pooh will not only remind you that you are still very much a child beneath the layers of accumulated cynicism and responsibility, but will make you laugh out loud. When you've burnt your shoulders, fallen out with your beloved, and are suffering after a plate of dodgy paella, that's no bad thing.

2. The Secret History (1992)

Donna Tartt's debut is a scintillatingly intelligent thriller. If you didn't read it first time around, read it now. If you did read it first time around read it again. Tartt combines classical culture with down and dirty skulduggery and the result is a joy. The author has an elegant style and a cool wit, and will make you long to kill someone at an exclusive American college. 

3. Out of Sheer Rage (1997)

So you don't care about DH Lawrence and find literary types absurd. No matter. Spend a few hours with Geoff Dyer and you might change your mind. Dyer is one of the very best of contemporary writers, able to be interesting on any theme. His story of his inability to write a book about his hero Lawrence should be self-indulgent, but it's a brilliant, witty, fascinating and strangely affecting study of procrastination.  

4. Therapy (1995)

Ah, David Lodge. If comic fiction had the respect it deserved, this author would have won the Booker Prize. Tubby Passmore, a successful TV writer who should be enjoying his life, is miserable. Seeking fulfilment and meaning he goes looking for it in Spain ... with consequences ridiculous and tender. Therapy is Lodge on great form, mocking our obsession with permanent happiness and sneaking in plenty of existential philosophy along the way. If you're having a rubbish time on your holiday this will make you feel better.

5. The Tent (2007)

Margaret Atwood is a marvel. She writes with graceful wisdom and undercuts everything she does with a sly, deadpan wit. This collection of tales, essays, myths and musings is perfect for our Twitter-infected world. The stories are so short that even if you feel that your attention span has become perilously denuded you should be able to get to the end of …

6. Our Man in Havana (1958)

Graham Greene's finest comic hour. His tale of a vacuum cleaner salesman turned spook spoofed the espionage genre long before Mike Myers. Greene might have dismissed it as one of his "entertainments," but ignore him. This is the equal of the author's "serious" books like Brighton Rock and The Heart of the Matter and much funnier. Its setting in pre-revolutionary Cuba is also sufficiently exotic to compensate for any inadequacies in the location you have chosen for your summer getaway. 

12 August 2010